


Lost Among the Spaces

by Elleth



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Drabble Sequence, M/M, Presumed Dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-03
Updated: 2016-09-03
Packaged: 2018-08-12 16:44:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7941712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elleth/pseuds/Elleth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Onni comes too late. Onni comes too late and finds Reynir's Haven abandoned.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost Among the Spaces

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yuuago](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuuago/gifts).



> So I heard you liked angsty mages...

Onni comes too late. Onni comes too late and finds Reynir's Haven abandoned. The sheep stand clumped together against a distant hillside, the only shelter in the strange, tree-less landscape. The grass has withered into winter-yellow, and where the waterfall should be is only a trickle onto the rocks below. 

He can't help thinking that that is Reynir's life dripping down and down, and feels answering tears start up, choking him. Onni alights in a scuffed circle in the melting snow, and as he paces around it in his human shape, he realizes what it is - a broken, devastated rune.

-

It's his fault. He let his grudge at Reynir's inquisitiveness get the better of him, all about that dumb recklessness. Non-immune, brightly cheerful and indomitable, and young enough to think he's invincible in daring his luck: Going into the Silent World, simply strutting into Onni's area, exploring that church in the dreamspace that almost got them hurled straight into a Rash-infested past that could have doomed them in a heartbeat… but none of that matters now. 

It's straightforward. Onni ignored Reynir's call too long. A ghost breached Reynir's defenses. Reynir is gone. 

Onni sits in the snow until he wakes.

-

No one is answering the radio, either. 

Onni can't bring himself to be in the same room as the machine; he hides with the children instead, but he leaves his owl to watch as one by one and from morning well into the night, Siv, Torbjörn, Trond and Taru try for contact, receiving only the faint airwave screeches when it isn't outright static. Taru turns and gives the owl a look - she senses Onni's there - and shakes her head. 

It's not even pain, just numbness. Tuuri, Lalli. _Reynir._ The third name hammers on his mind alongside his family.

-

This is why Onni doesn't fall in love. This is why Onni refuses to make close friends. This is why - why he resented Reynir's attention. Kept his distance. This is why he's shaking while Malin is asleep on his lap in the Västerström pillow mansion, and tries not to cry in her presence. Reynir simply walked through his defenses and into spots where he had no place, and filled the place with enough sunshine for his damn water lilies to start blooming. 

The thought of being alone in his Haven seems unbearable. The house, too, has gone quiet and dim. 

\- 

The clock ticks five in the morning when Onni's runo for staying awake wears off. It's ordinary dreaming he allows himself, otherwise he fears - _he fears_. There's nothing there for him now. His dream is bleak, too - the church, and a ring of ornamented candles burning, as in those old-world wakes. In their middle is Reynir, and if he ever looked at Onni like he was a hero - as after the first rescue, Onni remembers those wonder-struck eyes staring up at him - then Reynir's eyes are all dark and disappointment now. Even if he lives - _if_ \- it's over.

-

Onni has lost people before, knows there is no choice of going back, but his dream bleeds into mage-space with an urgency that permits no delay. Something - he refuses to put a name to it, refuses to call it hope for fear that it turns out false - pulls on him, and he takes wing, gliding soundlessly over the dream-world waters. Lalli's Haven is empty, the raft tilted and choked with weeds, but glowing faintly across the space between there's candlelight at the edge of Reynir's desolate area.

Onni's heart squeezes in his chest. It's not hope; he doesn't deserve that. 

-

There's a half-circle of candles guarding the church gate, flickering and close to going out. Onni steps over them with care, and freezes. There's no sign of the priest, but his eyes find Lalli curled under a pew first of all, and Tuuri sleeping next to him. Something in Onni's chest shatters, then, and he spots the others one by one, the Cleanser, the Medic, the Captain. All three are hurt, but they all live. Only Reynir is not there at all.

After Saimaa, waking to organize a rescue that's one man short is the hardest thing he's ever done. 

-

He stops short any question from his organizers about Reynir, and stifles Tuuri's attempts to talk to him over the radio. He can't put on a brave face, not even for her, but she doesn't have to know how bad it is, how close he came to losing her and how hard he takes Reynir's loss. He doesn't leave his Haven when he sleeps through much of the two weeks that the quarantine ship lies outside Öresund base, and considers what charges he can press before the Nordic Council to see himself adequately punished by more than just his guilt.

-

Reynir's family is at Öresund Base when he arrives, and Onni almost turns around back onto the train. 

When the team disembarks, Tuuri looks pale and drawn and silent, Lalli appears oddly awake - the two weeks of rest have done him good, though he says he misses the forest and wants to go home. Onni angrily deflects any questions with the old excuse, and he's about ready to take them and leave when there's a shout from the deck of the ship. Sigrun, Mikkel and Emil emerge wheeling a hospital bed between them, and Onni's entire world entirely blacks out. 

-

There's no such thing in Onni's life as a fortunate turn of events, but when he wakes to a head full of red hair in his face, he might just begin believing that such things are possible. 

"Hey," says Reynir, beside him in the same bed, when Onni stirs. The shadows under his eyes are dark as Tuonela, and not even that damn sunshine grin can drive them off his face. "Not going away?"

"Not going away," Onni answers. Not that his legs would carry him. Not that he wants to. "Not if you're real." 

Reynir shrugs, brightly. "Real enough." 

-

"- everyone into the church from my place before the ghost got me and almost ate me whole, and the pastor - drove it off and I think she went wherever she wanted to go, now," Reynir says. " I think I would be gone for good, too, if you hadn't - sorry." 

Onni feels tears choking him, soaking into the thin pillowcase. 

"Allergies?" asks Reynir, pointing at his face. "Tuuri said - " Onni shakes his head. 

"I - I'm - " _a fool_ , because the words won't come past his lips. "Relief." 

"Yeah. Relief," Reynir repeats, his papery lips suddenly smiling close and warm against Onni's mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to A. for the beta!


End file.
